Parents of China Victim Get U.S. Visas

By

Laurie Burkitt

Updated April 18, 2013 10:59 p.m. ET

SHENYANG, China—U.S. officials issued visas Thursday to the parents of Lu Lingzi, the Chinese student killed Monday in the Boston Marathon bombing. People in her hometown said the family was struggling with the loss of its only child.

The U.S. Embassy granted the parents of Lu Lingzi, one of the three victims in the Boston Marathon bombing, visas for immediate entry. The WSJ's Carlos Tejada talks about how the story of Ms. Lu's death unfolded on the Chinese Web.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing issued visas to the parents of the deceased victim from Shenyang as well as to the parents of a second Chinese student injured during the bombing, an embassy spokesman said. U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke has spoken with the families to express condolences, the spokesman said. The embassy didn't identify the victims or families by name, citing their requests for privacy. "We stand ready to provide any assistance to the family members to ensure they are able to personally deal with this tragedy as quickly and easily as possible," it said in a statement. "Our hearts go out to the families of all victims of this senseless act of violence."

The travel plans of Ms. Lu's family weren't clear.

Terror in the U.S.

Site of the Blasts

In Ms. Lu's hometown of Shenyang, a northeastern industrial hub of more than eight million people, local media appeared to comply with the family's wishes. A local newspaper on Wednesday used Ms. Lu's picture, but on Thursday local media referred to her simply as "a girl from Shenyang."

The family's grief appeared to be the reason. "This was and will be their only child," said a teacher who gave her surname as Gao at the Northeast Yucai School where Ms. Lu once studied. She added that Ms. Lu's parents had to tell their own parents that their grandchild had died.

A statement attributed to Ms. Lu's family—posted Thursday on the website of Boston University, where Ms. Lu attended school—said studying in the U.S. had been "her dream."

"While she was here, she fell in love with Boston and its people," the statement said. "She loved her new friends and her professors at Boston University. She wanted to play a role in international business, specializing in applied mathematics. She has been studying very hard toward her goal. Sadly, it was not to be.

"While her dream has not been realized, we want to encourage others who have Lingzi's ambition and dreams, and want to make the world a better place, to continue moving forward."

In the statement the family thanked U.S. and Chinese officials and asked media outlets to respect their privacy.

Ms. Lu's death resonates with many in China because of its one-child policy, which was implemented in 1980 to slow China's soaring population growth. As a result, many households put their hopes, dreams and fears behind their only child. Said one post on China's Sina Weibo microblogging service widely repeated online: "An only child is the lifeblood of a family!"

Video

The FBI releases a surveillance video containing two people who appear to leave a bag where one of two bombs exploded. Video: FBI.

The FBI released images of two individuals suspected of involvement in Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Many parents rely on their children for care-taking as they age, making losses such as Ms. Lu's often painful both emotionally and economically, said Wang Feng, a population expert and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing.

"With losses of only children, highlighted by cases like this, and those from other kinds of attention-getting tragedies, hundreds of millions of Chinese parents with only one child inevitably think about what they would do should such an utterly unfortunate thing happen to them," Mr. Wang said.

Explosions Rock Boston

Ms. Lu's death also puts into focus the many Chinese students who study abroad. China's Ministry of Education said 399,600 went overseas to study last year, up 18% from the year before. It said more than 90% were self-supported. That same year 272,900 students returned to China.

More than 190,000 Chinese students studied in the U.S. during the 2011-12 school year, according to the Institute of International Education.

In the U.S., Zhang Haoyan, a student at Brandeis University just outside Boston, said she had known Ms. Lu in Shenyang, Beijing and Boston for 11 years. Referring to Ms. Lu by her nickname, she said, "The night before the bombing, Jingjing told me that she cooked beef Bourguignon and it was very successful. She asked me to join her one day. But I would never have the chance."

More Coverage

Ms. Zhang said Ms. Lu hit the books hard, sometimes turning down offers to chat because she had homework to finish. But she also took delight in success such as getting an on-campus job, she said.

"Jingjing is ordinary girl from an ordinary family, she has her simple happiness and simple ideals," Ms. Zhang said. "This disaster took her away from us, leaving us with endless tears, and we will miss her forever. "

Ms. Lu's school in Shenyang, Northeast Yucai, mirrors a well-funded college campus in the U.S., with a large square in between its many buildings. It has a dedicated foreign-language school with international teachers and touts its English-language teaching skills, the foreign studies of many of its faculty members and its alliances with foreign schools. Teachers say many of Ms. Lu's classmates are overseas, as 100 of the 500-600 students who graduate from Yucai each year go abroad for college.

In front of the school on Wednesday, as students exercised in their blue-and-white track-suit uniforms, 18-year-old Zhang Tianyu said he wasn't deterred. "This won't prevent us from going abroad to study," he said, though he noted the U.S. hadn't been in his plans.

Outside the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang, a teacher at Liaoning Normal University who gave her name as Guo prepared to apply for a visa. She said the Boston incident, while frightening, wouldn't scare her away from visiting. "This kind of thing happens all over the world," Ms. Guo said. "But if my colleagues were sending students or children to study in the U.S., they would think twice," she said.

—Lilian Lin in Shenyang and Fanfan Wang in Shanghai contributed to this article.

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